


Ophelia

by fiveyaaas



Series: Fiveya Soulmate AUs [3]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Possessive Behavior, Rated M for later Chapters, Songfic, chapter titles based off lyrics of ophelia by the lumineers, five does go to the apocalypse, leonard is in this but like only two or three chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:47:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25318555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: “She had tried with everyone else, but each time, she had failed. She had cried when she realized she didn’t have powers. At the time, she decided Five had a healing capability and he did it himself. Still, when he got hurt in training that became more and more frequent, she would gently touch the wound and it would continue to heal. She imagined that it was her doing it.And it was her doing it, but to call it a “power” would be like calling blue eyes a “power,” except blue eyes were technically more rare than what she could do.”Soulmate AU where one soulmate has the ability to heal the other physically and the other has the ability to heal the other emotionally.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Series: Fiveya Soulmate AUs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826062
Comments: 50
Kudos: 179





	1. Oh, oh, when I was younger

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to listen to the spotify playlist for this fic, follow this link:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/booyoushipwhore/playlist/5RpUafjdNuRwcJSfy9d9ir?si=5RlEZSckRwKsGlrZfsAQrw

It was when Five had broken his leg at nine years old from landing bad during a jump, that Vanya realized she had powers. 

It was a power that she would later learn was just as ordinary as her, but at the time she had reeled from it. She had  _ powers _ . 

She didn’t know when she went to him in the infirmary what she was about to do, she had just felt a commanding pull to go to his side. 

He had glanced up at her in shock, and then he snapped, “You’re going to get in trouble, Number Seven.”

She had set her gaze to the floor, and he had made a discontented noise. “Just leave soon, I won’t tell anybody.” 

She had looked up at him then, filled with a sudden happiness that she couldn’t explain. Then she had glanced at his leg and it was like the pain was her own, and she gasped. 

She touched his leg, not knowing why she was doing, and he hissed in pain and said, “Don’t  _ do  _ that, Seven.”

Then, the bruises started to fade and he sucked in a breath. She was shocked, then she looked up at him. He was staring at her, eyes wide. 

“I have  _ powers _ , Five!” she had exclaimed. He had nodded, dazed. In about twenty five years (for her at least), he would tell her that this was the moment he had known they were soulmates, that he had studied the concept one day when he had felt her emotions hit him like a ton of bricks. At the time, he didn’t tell her this, and she wouldn’t have known anyways. Reginald had never told them about soulmates, though he undoubtedly would have known about them even if he himself did not have one. Doctors frequently asked patients if they had soulmates before anything else and if they had a physical or emotional link. Five had the emotional link, able to change and feel her emotions. Vanya had the physical link, able to heal him any time he got hurt. 

She had sat down beside him, chattering excitedly about her powers happily. And then she had said she wanted to tell Reginald, and he yelled, “Don’t tell him!” 

She had been confused, and Five told her that Reginald would not like a healing power. She had frowned and said that she could heal everyone during their training, and he had told her not to. 

She had tried with everyone else, but each time, she had failed. She had cried when she realized she didn’t have powers. At the time, she decided Five had a healing capability and he did it himself. Still, when he got hurt in training that became more and more frequent, she would gently touch the wound and it would continue to heal. She imagined that it was her doing it. 

It _was_ her doing it, but to call it a “power” would be like calling blue eyes a “power,” except blue eyes were technically more rare than what she could do. 

When she felt the sadness tugging at her as she touched his wounds, sometimes the sadness would be pulled away. Five usually didn’t add emotions because he didn’t want her to suspect (she wouldn’t have), but he always stifled the sadness when it came at those moments. She wondered later, in the times when she hated him, if it was because he felt like he was trying to even it out, make sure he wasn’t indebted to her. And she’d later wonder after that time period if he had felt her sadness in the apocalypse and he was so unhappy that he did not have any happiness  _ to  _ share. 

And at the time, she thought the sadness had just left because at least he had gotten better, even if she wasn’t helping him get there. 

He always lied to Reginald when she went to the infirmary, and she lied for him the day he snuck into her room when she had been crying after Reginald had truly scared her one day. He didn’t give her happiness then because there was no reason they should have been happy in that home, but he took away her sadness as he held her hand. And when she had looked up at him, to thank him, he had disappeared.

He didn’t speak to her the next few days at all, but when Diego had snapped at her for stumbling and tripping against him, she had not felt any fear. She had just turned her head away, but she had caught a flash of Five’s face with his eyes narrowed over at her. They didn’t mention that ever. 

It was a secret for just the two of them that she healed him, and it was secret even to her when he healed her broken heart. After all, it was not Five who told her about the bond, he never confirmed it until she had been certain, and she had yelled at him and cried and told him that if he tried take away the hurt, she would tell Reginald about their bond so that he would try to separate them, force her to go to a boarding school somewhere far, far away from Five. And Five had panicked and her hurt had stayed, but she felt the pain in his knuckles the next day when he trained when he punched a dummy hard enough to stifle his own anger. And she hadn’t chosen to heal him, not even commenting as she saw the ripped skin on his knuckles or the purplish blotches of bruises as they ate dinner. And he hadn’t taken the sadness away when she had looked at them. 

But that would be a few years away, and they were happy now. The happiest days of their lives were in the days where he would train, and she would heal his wounds, and he would heal her broken heart. They were too young to call it love, too young to think of anything other than being best friends, and they were too young to know that they should be much more unhappy with where they were. Even though they shouldn’t have been, these would be the best years they would have for twenty years to come for Vanya and decades for Five. 

They thought, naively, that they would always be this happy. And then the Umbrella Academy was formed. 


	2. And I can’t feel no remorse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five reflects on the bond.

He wished the bond had been reversed, but then life might be too easy. Vanya rarely was physically injured, and his emotions were strong but he at least was somewhat accepted among them. 

The thing was, he  _ knew  _ how it felt for her every time she wasn’t included. He also would then feel the inevitable guilt after for wanting  _ to  _ be included. He wanted to take the umbrella off his arm, offer up a blank arm to her like they were roses on a first date, but he couldn’t do that. Just like he couldn’t make her anything other than what she was, and even if she was extraordinary to him, she was ordinary to all of the others. 

Each joke they made to one another that she wouldn’t understand, each snide comment, each tiny reminder that she wasn’t one of them— he felt it like he was experiencing it. He tried to take her pain, but sometimes it felt like there was just too much to take away and he couldn’t handle it anymore. He thought it was unfair if she expected that of him, anyways, though considering she didn’t even know what they were, she wouldn’t have. But if he could put the blame on her, it made it easier. He liked it to be easier. 

Still, he knew that she had no idea they were soulmates yet. Why would she? They had never been told about them, and he had looked for the information on his own. If he told her, he wasn’t sure how she would even react. He didn’t know if she would even want him, and that thought made him fill with anxiety immediately. It felt right then not to tell her, so that he wouldn’t know, and he wouldn’t be disappointed, and he could pretend that they meant more to each other than they really did.

He could have told the others to cut it out, to stop acting like she wasn’t experiencing bullshit too, but he didn’t. He chose to stay silent because it was easier and it’s not like he was responsible for her just because the world said he was. 

And, yet, when he felt the sting in his heart at night that alerted him to her crying herself to sleep again, he knew that he could help her with them and chose not to. He made her hurt go away to an extent, but there was too much to take away completely. 

He got hurt so often that he wondered if she felt the same way, but she always helped him. Even if it was just that he slept wrong and his shoulder hurt a little, she would scrunch her face at him at breakfast, look away, and his pain would vanish. It solidified the fact that he could be doing more every time. 

It was not that he was incapable of feeling guilty, it was that he could explain that guilt away. He could tell himself that she could handle herself. 

Five would look back many years later and wonder if he had done something then if everything that happened after would have even been a problem. The part of him that loved to hurt, loved to put blame on himself said that, yes, it would have been. But the more logical part knew that he likely always would have traveled time, there always would have been an apocalypse, and they always would have been unhappy for years. They’d get their happy ending one day, but he wished it could have come quicker.

He didn’t call her Seven any longer, she was Vanya. He liked the name, liked the way it felt against his mouth. There were points where he wanted to call her Seven though, to prove to himself that they had a connection, that they were equal in this. He knew they had their bond, that nobody could take that away from him. But it was not enough. He had to be completely hers, and she had to be completely his. Part of it wasn’t a possessive thought, in fact most of it was not. The vast majority wanted her to know that she was a part of him even if she was not anything to them. They had a connection from the universe, but it meant nothing when she cried herself to sleep and he didn’t ease her pain. It meant nothing when she didn’t even understand that they had it. 

His connection to her from the universe wasn’t enough for him, so it made sense that it wasn’t enough for her. When they were both thirty five and laying in bed together, he couldn’t feel any resentment to her for seeking the comfort of another man. When he had been thirty and seen it with his own eyes, the resentment had come so easily that he had wished the bond would be flipped for the sole purpose that she could feel his anger at her. It had always been selfless, his want for them to not feel the stronger pains they felt, but in that moment, his love for her was selfish. So selfish that he had pushed her away and it had caused the world to burn. 

He knew that she would have been jealous too, knew she was capable of ugly emotions just as much as him. A sick part of him when he was younger had craved the feeling of her resentment to the fans that screamed for him or even the waves possessive feelings she would feel when he was with the others. He wanted her to want him as much, craved knowing that he was it for her. He felt he could have destroyed the world too when he realized that he wasn’t. 

But that would be a few years away, and he could at least pretend that they were unconditional to one another, not just a product of a bond but a product of wanting one another. That she healed him because she wanted him to be okay, not that she felt a pull from an outside force telling her to do so. That when he lightened the strain of her emotions, she was thankful for it. 

He thought, naively, that he was enough. And then he saw the world burning before his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	3. And you can’t see past my blinders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanya finds out about their connection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically a third of the way through! Excited how this fic has gone so far!

Vanya’s hands shook against the book in her hand, and it dropped to the floor in front of her. She drew in a shaky breath, eyes filling with tears. 

Five chose at this instant to show up. He glanced over at where she was sitting in what she sometimes thought of as their spot in the library. 

“Oh, good, I was looking for you,” he said. He was about to add something when he saw her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Did you know?” she asked, fingers digging into her knees. 

“Did I know what?” His voice took on the tone he had when he was lying or evading an answer.

“Did. You. Know?” she enunciated the words, and blood drew where her nails sunk deeper. 

“So what if I did?” he snapped. “You don’t have to act like it’s such a huge deal.”

“You don’t just hide something like that,” she moved her hand away as she stood up. 

“Why do you even care?” 

She shot him an incredulous look. Then, she realized he would have felt every single piece of hurt and annoyance. It felt like a violation. 

“I shouldn’t care at all. Obviously just because the universe wants us to be together doesn’t mean  _ I  _ want it.”

(She did, but she wouldn’t ever say it when she had been this hurt.)

His face flashed with hurt just a second, but then his eyes narrowed and all he betrayed was anger. 

“Well, the feeling is mutual, don’t worry.” 

“Good!” 

“Good!” 

They both looked away from one another, and she felt a prickle of annoyance that Five had come in here to talk to her about something. He would likely sulk in the library though, make it seem like he had meant to be here for reasons other than her. Good. She can ignore him too. 

She successfully ignored him for all of eight very long minutes before she started crying. Five glanced over at her, brows furrowed, but he said nothing. 

She flipped the page of the book she was pretending to read, remembered that this was the book that she had found out about soulmates from, and then she was sobbing. 

He sighed, sitting down beside her. “I’m sorry.”

It occurred to her that he could make the hurt she was feeling go away, make her suddenly forgive him. He could make her love him if he wanted, couldn’t he? 

“Don’t,” she warned him. 

“Don’t apologize?” he asked, looking confused, and her stomach sunk. 

“Don’t make me forgive you.”

The hurt in his gaze was so quick that she thought it was possible it hadn’t ever been there. But then he spoke, and she knew it was. “You honestly think I would do that?”

“Couldn’t you?” she asked because she didn’t even know what his bond would even look like, and it was fear mainly that had prompted the thought.

“I  _ wouldn’t,  _ and that’s what you need to know. I can’t believe you ever would think I would do that, Vanya.”

“Yeah, well, I’m  _ ordinary _ , Five. What else would I have been good for in ten years?”

He flinched. “It is  _ not  _ like that.”

“But it is, you see, because I know that even if you come and comfort me each time they exclude me, ultimately, you’re one of them too _. _ ”

He breathed out sharply, nostrils flaring. “Just because you can’t handle the fact that you’re nothing but ordinary, that you have no powers of healing doesn’t mean you have the right to be mad at me. It’s not my fault that you’re ordinary.”

She jerked away from him, standing on shaking legs. She could see he knew he had gone too far, but she just shook her head at him. 

“Don’t you dare try to change my feelings,” she snapped. 

“What will you do even if I do?” he yelled. “Even if I would, what could you even do to me?”

“I could go to him,” she threatened. “I could go to him right now, say that I’m your soulmate. Tell him I’m a distraction to the academy, that he needs to force me over to a boarding school. He could make it to where we never saw each other again, and he would  _ delight  _ in it, knowing that he had that power over you. I could be as far away from you as he saw fit, and he would always have power over you.”

All of the fight left his eyes then. He slumped forward, head in his hands. 

She felt guilt, which she knew he felt, but he did not change. He did not change any of the flashes of conflicting emotions running through her head. He thought she would make good on her threat. 

She understood how badly it hurt for him then, to assume that he would betray her. Because his assumption that she was serious, it hurt more than she could possibly understand. 

“Go,” he said, quietly but still commanding. “Just, go.”

And she left him because she didn’t think he could ever possibly forgive her when he thought that she’d betrayed him this deeply. 

(He would, but he would never tell her that when he had been this hurt.)

When she saw his injured hands the next morning, the ones she had felt him pound relentlessly against a dummy until they bled, she did not heal his hand. She did not touch his hand tenderly, willing for it to get better. 

And when he felt the pain as she saw the blotches of purple, the hurt at seeing him feel pain, he did not try to change it. He wouldn’t have wanted to heal her pain just then, anyways, with her threatening to go to Reginald and put them both in danger. 

They both were thinking that they could never possibly change this situation. That they would never repair what they had broken. That this would always be how it was in the future. That they would never forgive one another.

(They will, but they could not possibly know, for it would not be for many, many years in the future after they would have already resolved they may not ever see each other again.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the reviews, and thank you to everyone who has been reading! I will try to update as frequently as I can!


	4. You’ve been on my mind since the flood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five leaves.

Five knew what Vanya felt when he left. He felt her emotions stronger than ever now that they were not speaking. He felt the fear and panic rise in her, and she shook her head at him. 

He thought of her threat. The one thing he feared more than anything about leaving was that she would be hurt by this, but Reginald did not know, did not suspect. When he was gone, she would not get hurt. 

He didn’t know why he cared. She had made it very clear that she did not think much of him. His stomach twisted at her words, at her thinking he would genuinely try to manipulate her emotions. The only time he had ever added any emotions to what she felt was to make her feel content, calm. He would  _ never _ use that against her, and obviously the universe thought it was some sort of cosmic joke by making someone who had no trust for him to be destined for him. 

He did not even think he could make her feel love because he was not entirely certain he had loved or been loved in his life, and he did not even know what it looked like.

He left the manor, certain he never would know what love looked like, but at least he could know what the future held and that could be enough. 

And then he had pulled his body through time, and he saw the world turn to ashes before him. 

He searched for that bond, that pull of her emotions. It was nowhere. 

Vanya was dead. 

He found the other’s bodies, but he never found hers. He wouldn’t have needed to, though. 

She would never forgive him, and he deserved it. 

He screamed her name before he cried. 

The next few days were spent walking numbly, looking for any signs that anybody in the world was alive. He wouldn’t find them for many years when he would be recruited for the Commission.

At one point, searching to find anybody alive was not about hoping to find anybody, but hoping to find what he needed to survive. He passed by a mannequin with a wig that reminded him of Vanya’s hair and kept walking on. He deserved nothing even remotely like her anyways.

Starvation set in pretty soon, and he ate what he could but not as frequently as he liked. He worried if he ate too much though, he would have nothing else. 

A thought came, unbidden, to his head as he had gotten a long cut against his calf three years in. What if Vanya could feel this? He knew his bond had turned off, his soulmate buried somewhere in the wreckage, but he tried to reason if he was alive now, would she sense him at sixteen?

And then just as quickly, it was gone. Even if Vanya could heal him then, she wouldn’t. And he didn’t expect her to. She couldn’t be expected to clean up his messes when he had been so cruel. 

He found her book one day, and he did keep that. He read it over and over, writing his equations in the margins, sleeping with it tucked safely to his side. There were points where he would imagine it was Vanya he was protecting, not just words she had written that had been reprinted many times. 

Some days he could pretend to himself that he hated her. That she was nothing, that he wanted nothing to do with her. 

He thought if he could just pretend for a few seconds that he could change his feelings. He imagined having the ability to change his own feelings, what he would do with it. Likely, he would make himself entirely blank of them because even though he liked to think he already had, they were there. They existed. They hurt the way he remembered Vanya’s had.

He was nineteen years old when he noticed that his injuries were disappearing occasionally. The first time it had happened, he’d thought nothing of it. He just assumed it wasn’t as bad as he thought.

Then, it was happening enough that he was certain what the cause was. He had filled with hope, searching everywhere for even an inkling of her emotions. He yelled her name. 

And then he was reminded of the thought he had had before, how they would experience differences possibly. He was not certain how it would be affected, but he knew she was 19 in a world where he was alive and he was 19 in a world where she was dead. And he fell to his knees, broke down, and sobbed again, mourning for this loss like he hadn’t already known. 

And when he saw the rubble that had dug into his knee, had cut it, and saw the wound seal itself, he couldn’t feel anything at all. He had gotten what he wished for. He was completely blank. 

When he was twenty one, he burned himself in one of the fires after tripping. The wound healed a few days later. He told himself he felt nothing.

When he was twenty four, he got a fever. Each night he thought that he would soon die, and each morning he would wake up. He could not really heal completely because he would need an environment where he could, but the pain and fever at least would leave him. He told himself he felt nothing. 

When he was twenty five, he got a horrible hangover and it didn’t go away, but where he had dropped the bottle of alcohol and the glass had been crushed against his skin had been long forgotten when he woke up. He told himself he felt nothing.

When he was twenty eight, he broke his leg, but it did not stay broken any longer than it had the first time when he was very young and she had healed him. He told himself he felt nothing.

When he was thirty, he was pretty certain that she was dead in every regard. And he need no one to tell him he felt too much. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	5. Heaven help a fool who falls in love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five is back in Vanya’s life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Officially over halfway done! Thank you for all the support that this story has gotten so far!!! 
> 
> While Five does leave in this one, he comes back her age, to clarify.

He was back. 

Well, he was back inside a body that matched her own age. He had been thirteen when he had left, and he looked the same age as her current one. 

Not that she was looking at him. She made a point to never meet his eyes as the others asked him questions. He did not try to hide the fact that he was looking at her.

She left while they talked. When they stopped speaking suddenly, she knew what would happen. As he materialized beside her, she wondered if she could run away. 

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She frowned at him. He wasn’t doing anything to stifle her anger, though the threat she’d made had happened many years prior and was not exactly a threat now, what with Reginald being now dead.

“You’re not gonna make me forgive you?” she snapped because part of her wanted him to do so, part of her wanted proof that he would.

He didn’t.

“I understand why you’re angry, and I wouldn’t change your feelings like that anyways. That’s always been true.”

“I have to leave,” she told him. He set his hands into his pockets, but he nodded.

Once she made to leave, he was behind her again, grabbing her hand. “Vanya, wait.”

She turned around stiffly. “What?”

“Thank you,” he said, taking this time to glance down. Before he had looked at her with no hesitation, but now there was trepidation in the downset of his gaze.

“For what?”

He cleared his throat, meeting her gaze again. “I know you healed me, when I was, ah… gone.”

She had, but him noticing made her unsettled. He had gotten hurt so many times over the years that she just figured he wouldn’t notice the times when she healed him. 

“Well, you’re welcome,” she told him, pulling her hand out of his grasp. “But I do have to leave.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” he said though it really didn’t when the reason she intended to leave was because of him being right there, confusing her. 

“Okay, see you soon.”

It felt oddly… polite. Like they were going to some default setting in hopes of not stepping on the other’s toes. 

“Yeah, you too.”

She left stiffly, uncomfortable. When she got to her apartment later, she jumped at the sight of him. 

He frowned at her, “You don’t have locks on your windows.”

She didn’t think this was an important detail, considering locks weren’t going to stop a murderer, but she didn’t respond. 

“I need to tell you something.”

She raised a brow. “What?”

He glanced over at her. “The world is going to end.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“You’re still upset,” he said, reading her face. 

“You couldn’t read my emotions already?”

“Vanya,” he started then closed his eyes. “I have to find a way to stop the apocalypse, and if you don’t want to help me, that’s fine.”

“Great! I don’t!” He wasn’t supposed to just show up here, both in her apartment and in her life in general. “Have fun solving it! Now leave.”

Apparently being told to leave was not clear because he started trying to apologize. She wanted to snap at him, but she was pretty sure if she ignored him long enough, he would disappear.

This didn’t work. Five told her of the apocalypse, everything he knew. She just stared ahead blankly. 

Finally, he just sighed. “I’ll leave, you clearly don’t believe me.”

She didn’t.

He was gone. 

Over the years that Five had left, she had carefully bottled each feeling she had about him and then hid the bottles very far away. When she had left the mansion, it had been easier to find forgiveness for him, and she healed him each time she could. 

She knew from the state of the injuries he had to be somewhere awful, but anywhere he could have gone that hurt him that many times would have messed him up enough to where he could believe anything. Maybe his mind was completely shattered and he was clinging to what he had been raised on by Reginald. She imagined if she had been horribly injured that much on a regular basis, she would have not been entirely there either.

She wasn’t going to make an excuse for him, though. She couldn’t do that. Even though she knew she was in love with him, she couldn’t. Not when he could leave her so easily. 

Years later, she would look back on making Five leave. She would look back on forcing herself to stifle her emotions in hopes that his reappearance in her life would not affect her as it was. She would one day know that if she had listened to Five, if she had gone with him, she would have never made the mistakes that came shortly after. Of course, Five would look back at the mistakes he made as well, and they would come to the agreement that there was no point looking at “what if” because they knew it was hopeless. 

She knew that she would always still wonder. She knew that the regret would always be there. 

The day after Five left, she woke up with a hangover. It had been the first time she had attempted drinking in a very long time, usually the pills always worried her to try to ever drink. She had only drank because of the nagging feeling that Five could be right, but she kept trying to tell herself with each sip that there was no way he could have been. There was just no way that the world would end when he said it did. 

She heard a knocking on her door, and she groaned as she sat up. She blinked a few times, groggy. The knocking was somehow both persistent but patient, conflicting. She decided she liked the conflicting noise, right now all she was experiencing was conflicting emotions, at least when it was a noise she could make it go away. Only Five could take her emotions away. 

She padded to the front door of her apartment, opening it without giving much thought. 

A man smiled down at her, and she blearily peered up at him. In her hungover state, he seemed a little like Five, a thought that gave her a jolt. 

“Who are you?” she asked. 

“I’m Leonard.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	6. And I don’t feel nothing at all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five realizes Vanya causes the apocalypse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everybody leaving comments and kudos!!! I expect this fic to be done by today or tomorrow.

He shouldn’t have expected her to help him, to even want to be near him before the world would burn. She didn’t believe him, and why would she? He had betrayed her trust already, why should he expect it back?

Still, he wanted her to have come with him. He could feel every single one of her emotions, the shock of them being all he had felt when he got back to all of them. He could barely register the news of Reginald because he had already been experiencing every single one of the conflicting things he felt. She was happy, to a certain extent, to see him. There was relief there too. It had made him not question the other things she had been feeling, made him think he could tell her and she would immediately follow him. 

He clutched the glass eye in his pocket. He didn’t need her to help him solve this. He had lasted being alone for most of his life; he didn’t need her now. 

With each development, though, he wondered very strongly whether or not that sentiment is true. 

As he found every single new piece of evidence, all he felt was a greater sense of confusion. He could sense Vanya’s emotions in the background, continually being conflicted. He wondered if it was because she regretted sending him away, but he didn’t let himself stop to think of her emotions very much at all. He was busy, and he knew that he would not be able to stop the apocalypse if he focused on Vanya. 

Five would find the cause of the end of the world, and he would stop it. Everybody depended on him, and he had to save them. He could not focus on anything other than that. 

The problem was that even though he was focused, he kept reaching dead ends or developments that made absolutely no sense. It occurred to him that even if he could stop it, he might not be able to do so. What if there simply wasn’t enough time for him to stop this?

No. He would not allow that. He would find his answers, and he would save every single one of them. He would forgive Vanya and they could work everything out. They would all be fine. They had to be. 

And until he could save them all, until he was certain that they were okay, he would not stop and let himself feel. He had turned off his emotions in the apocalypse, forced them away when he joined the commission after he had realized she was dead and it was his only way home, and he could leave them off now. Even if he felt everything she felt, he could stifle his own.

He wished he had control of his own emotions. He wished he could turn them off like he could turn off Vanya’s. He never touched Vanya’s emotions unless she needed his help, and she would be okay with it.

After he had cut open the tracker from his arm the night after he left, almost immediately the skin had knitted together. It had given him hope that night, but that hope was gone now. All he could focus on was saving all of them. He would never be able to be with her with her dead. He couldn’t let that happen.

Five was able to keep his emotions carefully compartmentalized for many of the days leading up to the end of the world, but then he found out about Leonard. 

The feelings he had noted from her, so conflicted, had been partially about Leonard. When Five realized, nausea settled against his stomach. 

The first feeling he felt was rage. Five had not felt jealousy in so long, but this was more than that. The anger was partially betrayal that she would do this. There was also the anger in knowing that Leonard was manipulating his Vanya, but he was ashamed to admit that that was not the main reason. He wanted it to be all concern for Vanya, but the anger he felt was not just that. He didn’t claim to be a good person, but he wished that all of the concern had lay in her safety and not his own self-interests.

Eventually, though, the anger started to shift to a deeply unsettled sadness. She was being manipulated by that asshole, all because she was so desperately in need of somebody to love her. If he had been there for her in the first place, he could have saved her from this. If the asshole that raised them hadn’t suppressed her powers, she would have been able to control them by now. 

He loved her, and his life from the moment he had run away at thirteen up until now had been about saving her. But, in ignoring her to save the world, he had ended it. The apocalypse would be almost as much his fault as it was hers. 

He had to stop it, had to stop her. He didn’t know how. Well, he knew exactly how, but he didn’t know how after he would sleep at night. Did not know how he could last in a world without her. 

But he would have to. There were people outside of them. There were people that had their bond out there, people that would not be saved. And even if he loved Vanya, which he did to a degree of self-destruction, she was ultimately just one person. He imagined that when he killed her though, he would not last much longer. He could not handle it. He could not handle being in a world without her, though he had already lasted in one. That world, the one where she had not existed, at least had hope that he could save her. But he couldn’t really save her now.

He _could_ make it painless. He knew thousands of different ways to kill, and he knew ways that would cause her virtually no pain. He could hold her in his arms, close her eyes. He could whisper his apologies to her still body. He would never forgive himself, but he would hope that somewhere her spirit would forgive him. He could tell her he loved her, and maybe her spirit would hear. 

It was Vanya or the rest of the world. The choice should be simple. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! Next update will come soon!


	7. And you can’t feel nothing small

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The apocalypse is stopped by Five.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost done!! Just two more chapters!!

Vanya did not remember much of the events that followed. The last clear memory was of killing Leonard, but she could not remember much of what happened next. Her powers had been too strong, broken her too much, for her to even want to remember them.

She remembered the gun, the deafening of her ears with the shot. She remembered slumping into Five’s arms, knowing at that instant who had fired the bullet that had missed her. Five was a perfect shot, she was certain of that, and if he had meant to kill her, she would have been dead.

Part of her wished he had killed her, and she knew he had to know that with the way each time she felt the emotion rise up and Five quickly snapping it away. She wished she could keep it, could let the feeling last, but she understood why he would take that one away for sure. He had, after all, risked the entire world to keep her alive. Him not letting those emotions take over was ensuring the investment had been worth it.

She could figure out pretty well what happened over the conversations that she caught onto that surrounded her while she lay in the familiar lights of the infirmary. 

Five had taken them back to right after Reginald had passed. He planned to slowly take her off the meds, and while he was doing that, he would help stifle her emotions. She was a little annoyed at the concept, but then again, it could have been much worse. Five was trying to protect her, and he wasn’t going to let her end the world or herself. She could understand that, thinking of all the times she had healed him even though she had no idea where he had been. 

Five stayed by her side at all times, and she wasn’t sure exactly what she was healing from. She knew that he had not shot her, but she also felt a dull ache all over. Vanya heard the sound of Grace saying at one point that she was not necessarily physically injured that bad, just that she was emotionally in a stunted place. She was very much awake for most of it, but often she would fall asleep or pretend to sleep so that she could hear what they were saying. 

Five told them all about their bond, and if she had not been pretending to sleep, she would have laughed at the way the others had sputtered. 

“How is that even statistically possible?” Allison had asked. 

“You healed pretty quickly from your injury,” Five noted. Allison made a bunch of angered noises at that, and Klaus had told her to chill out. Vanya wasn’t certain, but she had a very strong guess that Klaus had a soulmate there as well. She assumed the fact Klaus hadn’t died of an overdose yet sort of made a little sense now (although she wasn’t entirely certain if his power had something to do with it either). 

“Is she going to be okay?” Klaus had asked then, and Five had made a soft noise of discontent.

“She should be fine,” he told him, squeezing her hand. She let herself drift into a sleep that was not faked shortly after. 

Vanya would one day tell Five that the first thing she remembered after killing Leonard was being held in his arms. She had slid in and out of consciousness at that point. She remembered seeing his tears, him whispering that he loved her, begging for her to forgive him and to be okay. She was aware that he knew he had not been the one to kill her, but he had felt her emotions and wondered if that would be enough. 

He had told the others that he was going to turn back time. They had to hurry around him. He had scooped her up into his arms easily, grabbing onto one of the others and looping his arms with someone else. She had drifted unconscious before he jumped, but not before she felt it.

He had stifled her emotions, the first time since they had been very young. She had not wanted it for so long, but she wished he could have before. She wished they had known. They could have taken back all of their mistakes, saved themselves all the time they had lost. She wished he had never left at all, and that she had never been desperate enough to wreck herself with Leonard.

The only emotion he didn’t take away in that instant was the overwhelming feeling of love for him.

Then, he had jumped them all to the past. 

Vanya would awaken a few weeks after the original apocalypse had been slated, or at least awaken for longer than the hour increments that had lasted before. 

Five would be by her side, and she would pull him down to her. She would kiss him until they both had to break away to breathe. She would ask him to take her to his room, and they would continue kissing as he did. They would fall onto his bed, and they would apologize over and over to one another. They would promise each other it would not ever happen again as they touched each other, and they would mean it. They would take off their clothes and allow themselves to fully feel. They would hold one another afterwards, and they would promise each other that this was it. That this would never change. And it wouldn’t. 

They would keep the promises they whispered to one another that night for the rest of their lives. And they would heal from the hurt that had been a prominent part of them as well. And it would be better.

That would be one day, though. For now, they had each other. And that was enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the support this story has received!!


	8. Honey, I love you, that’s all she wrote

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanya and Five begin the rest of their lives together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is just smut, so if you don’t like smut, you can skip it.

It had been a year since the apocalypse was slated to happen. Vanya had started training each day with Five, slowly discovering her powers. Any day when she did anything to concern him, he immediately stopped their training.

Some days he stopped training for other reasons, like now.

Vanya bit her lip, and he knew immediately what was about to happen. He was not going to complain at all, though. In truth, they had gotten a lot done today anyways, and he had considered calling it.

Today’s practice had been on a Monday, which is the day Five set aside for teaching her when she  _ shouldn’t  _ use her powers. They regularly worked on self defense on Mondays, in ways that did not involve her powers. It would be chaos if she had to use her powers every time she was in a remotely dangerous situation, and, considering their lives consisted of dangerous situations, she needed to be prepared. Five had taught her when they were very young how to get away from anybody trying to hurt her, but she definitely needed to know things other than very basic self defense.

They had worked with a variety of weapons in previous weeks- knives, guns, etc. Today, he had tried hand-to-hand combat after an hour dedicated to how to control the powers when she was nervous. For a while, they were capable of practicing the basic moves he had taught her when she was younger. They started moving onto more complex moves, and at one point, he felt a flicker of emotions from Vanya that he also saw early in her eyes.

He had ignored it the first few instances, but slowly he felt his face going flush. And then she had bit her lip and glanced up at him, and he grabbed her and jumped her to their room.

Falling on the bed, Vanya groaned as he hungrily kissed against her neck. His hand slipped under her shirt, and she gasped. 

“You did well in practice today,” he complimented her, and she grinned. He made a point to tell her every little thing she did right, not only for the spark of pleasure he would feel from her each time (though he did enjoy feeling it) but also because he wanted her to know how proud he was of her. It was rare that he had heard that praise for his own training, but he felt it would have been entirely wrong to treat Vanya’s training that way. Plus, she had the capacity to end the world, and he had to make sure that would not happen. 

“Thank you,” she told him, voice soft. She brushed the hair against his forehead. “You’re a good teacher.”

“It is very hard to focus when your emotions are that loud,” he quipped. “You being unbearably horny is a horrible way to react to hand-on-hand combat. I’m pretty sure if you got horny when I was assassinating you, that wouldn’t have saved your life.”

“That’s not true,” Vanya argued. “If  _ you  _ had been the one who was supposed to be assassinating me, and I got horny, I feel like my chances of survival would skyrocket.”

“You’re the  _ worst. _ ”

“I love you too.”

He rolled his eyes, wanting to wipe the self-righteous smirk off her face. The quickest way to do so involved sliding his hands down her pants, and as he did just that, she whimpered. 

He stroked her gently, and she bit her lip again as she had while they trained. The strong feelings of desire he felt from her were almost as delightful as if they had been his own. His finger slipped inside of her as his thumb pressed against where she wanted him most. 

He made sure to compliment her on how well she did then, too, before he moved his mouth down between her thighs after her first orgasm. 

“Five,” she yelped, already overstimulated. He hummed approvingly, and she begged him nonsensically. 

His tongue licked a stripe against her, and she pulled his hair. He was glad as he registered the faint pain of his hair being pulled, a pain he gladly welcomed and wouldn’t have wanted her to take away. 

He gripped her thighs, pulling them to rest on her shoulder as he ate her out. She kept begging him to keep going until she climaxed again, shaking. 

He kissed up her body until he reached her mouth, letting her taste herself on his tongue. He unbuckled his belt, grabbing a condom out of his wallet and rolling it on before pushing inside of her. 

They both gasped at the sensation of togetherness, and his thoughts grew tender. He praised her for being so good, being perfect for him, being the greatest thing he ever knew. She preened at his words. He had always been a talker, but usually the words he said were much more filthy. Looking down at her and feeling everything she felt and knowing how far they had come, though, he just wanted to praise her for hours. And he did.

When they had tired out from one another, panting, Five thought of all the plans he had for their future. The future that they finally could have. There was no Reginald to stop them, no apocalypse, nothing. Technically, there was the Commission, but he was pretty sure the assassins were afraid to attack at this point because everyone who had tried had ended immediately. 

They had a chance now. They had their whole lives in front of them, and they could finally be happy. 

And they would be. They had had enough suffering, and they would get a happy ending, even if they had never thought they would. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! One chapter to go!


	9. You’ve been on my mind like a drug

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read, left kudos, or gave encouraging comments!

One year after the apocalypse turned to two. 

Vanya and Five agreed to get married by year three with no apocalypse. Five was pretty certain by that point the commission was off their back. They did not have a huge, romantic moment of proposal, which annoyed Allison deeply when she steamrolled their wedding and took over all planning. 

They got married in year four. Allison and Luther were already married, holding hands and smiling at Allison’s daughter, Claire, who had told Five and Vanya that she would get to be a flower girl or she would have her mother rumor them. Vanya was tempted to explain that her mother absolutely had already forced this upon them, and that she did not need a rumor but instead a serious guilt trip. Ben was fully corporeal for the ceremony, resting his chin on a (sober) Klaus’s shoulder. 

In year six, Five and Vanya, who already had three very well-trained dogs, adopted a fourth. The puppy quickly became the leader of the others, which considering the others were mastiffs and the puppy was a Yorkie, amused them both immensely. They had found out at one point that neither of them were able to have children, but they agreed that they would look into adopting children a few years later. 

In year ten, they did. Their daughter was completely ordinary as far as having powers, and Vanya raised her to know that there was nothing wrong with that. She was also a little thankful for it. If Five’s powers were inherited, she was entirely certain her child would regularly be injured from running into walls or landing in bad places. Besides, Five taught her so many things that she was already enough of a threat with her mind that Vanya was certain she’d have many arguments ahead about time travel. 

In year thirty, their daughter was going to the college Five taught at, regularly arguing with him about answers to problems in the middle of class. (He didn’t say it, but she knew he was proud.)

The others were regular parts of their lives as the years went by. They spent as much time together as they could with the business of all of their lives, only partially out of being forced by Allison.

When Klaus had been sober long enough to fully bring Ben back, they had gotten married immediately. They made all of them listen to very colorful vows. Ben surprised them all by being the more vulgar of the two. Luckily, that wedding had not been open to the public. Allison had already learned her lesson about steamrolling and making weddings the events of the century with Five and Vanya anyways.

Allison and Luther forced everyone to attend weekly dinners. Vanya and Five looked on in amusement at Luther’s dopey grin and Allison’s chastising of all of them for wearing clothes not approved in the rule book (which, seriously, what did she expect when she wrote a uniform for eating dinner?). Claire asked Five thousands of questions about the Academy, deciding at one point that he was her favorite uncle. Luckily, he was much nicer to children than he was to most people.

Diego did eventually finish the police academy, bringing home a kind woman that he worked with that he introduced as his soulmate who looked horrified when Ben and Klaus both lamented about Diego not being their third. Vanya didn’t blame her. 

Vanya and Five kept every one of the promises they had made to one another. That could have gone without saying, though, of course. 

One day, in an indeterminate time in the future, they were able to both fully forgive one another. Vanya forgave Five for leaving, for dismissing her years ago. Five forgave Vanya for Leonard and the apocalypse. They knew that neither of them would ever make the mistakes again, that it was not necessary to even tell each other that they were forgiven. But they also knew that they had to tell each other, that they had to tell each other everything. It was lack of communication that had gotten them so messed up before, and they would not let it happen again. 

There was also, at a later indeterminate point in the future, a day they would forgive _themselves_ for all that happened. They were happy now, and that is what mattered. They were together, and they were happy, and they had the rest of their lives. They would entirely move on from the mistakes of the past. 

Vanya knew one day that she was extraordinary. Not because she could heal Five. Not even that she had powers. No, she realized she was extraordinary because she was able to survive. 

And that is what she and Five both did, even at the worst points of their lives. They survived. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know how I feel about this ending, but I’m accepting it. Thank you all again for all the support for this story! I will be continuing “Human” and “Blinding Lights.” I will also post a series of unrelated, explicit one shots that will be a new series called “Misuse of Powers” and also eventually start the two other soulmate AUs I have outlined!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I will update this fic at the same time as I update others, so it may take a little bit longer for updates (but not too long hopefully.)


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